A Post Supposedly About Weddings At The National Railway Museum Which Also Stops At A Virgin Trains Rant, Sock Anger And A Minor Nervous Episode
As some kind of nod to journalistic convention I’m going to start by informing you that it’s possible to have your wedding at the National Railway Museum in York. They have a licence for civil ceremonies with up to 200 guests, and can hold a reception for up to 500.
The obvious thing is to set all this out with a couple of trainspotter jokes – how likely is it, after all, that your average railway enthusiast is going to have found someone to marry him? If he has pulled it off (presumably online), is he going to turn up to his nuptials in an anorak?
But the thing is, dear reader, I am writing this ON A TRAIN. Travelling from London to Manchester, I am sitting at Stoke-on-Trent – recently rebranded as “Snog-on-the-Sofa” by Virgin Trains, which seems to have noticed how many couples conduct their relationships with the help of its lines. According to a recently poll conducted by me, of my mates, one hundred per cent of people who live that romantic railway dream hate those adverts.
Why? Well, it’s not because of the train company. Virgin are fine, I never have any delays, the service (two hours and seven minutes from Euston to Piccadilly) is so much quicker than driving that you’d be mad to take a car. There just isn’t that much romance to it.
Take now. I’m on the 15:00, which is the last train before peak hours begin – ie, the last time you can use an off-peak (£67) ticket until 18:35. Between 15:20 and 18:30, it costs £123.
Getting the train just before or just after peak hours from London to Manchester is the best training I can think of for a future in which there is limited food and water available. Reader, I know I would survive. The moment the platform announcement goes, the other alpha travellers and I begin the suitcase sprint to the train. Doddery old couple with big heavy bags that they could probably use a hand with? Gone in a blur. Small child in the middle of the concourse? I’m running round it. Woman with buggy trying to find her tickets in her handbag? She’s getting shoved out of the way. Otherwise you’re standing up all the way there.
Unless you get seriously lucky – as I have today – and they decommission First Class. Today I have the privilege of some leg room, a table with a power socket, free Wi-Fi – and on the chair next to me, the feet of the man opposite. Don’t worry, he’s not wearing his shoes – he’s taken them off, so that I can enjoy his faded grey, slightly sweaty socks.
I’ve already had to text my beloved to confess that I’ve forgotten to bring our current box set, and been told to go back and get it. Invariably I forget something, but I refuse to keep anything in Manchester in case I need it. My boyfriend keeps so many things at mine that occasionally he has to take things back from London because he doesn’t have enough, say, socks at home. So there we are, on the train every weekend, traipsing around with our laptops and our reading material and our other shoes and our pants.
But thinking about it, perhaps Virgin and the National Railway Museum are right. Despite all the hassle, the sweating on the Tube to the train, the expense, it is sort of romantic. To paraphrase Hugh Grant, train stations bring people together. What do you see on the rail platforms in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Exeter, Southampton, Welshpool and Colchester? Love, actually.
The National Railway Museum has in fact convinced me – it’s a pretty romantic venue. You can have your pictures taken in the royal gallery alongside Queen Victoria’s carriage, or eat the wedding breakfast in Station Hall, surrounded by locomotives. Your guests can take a look around the rest of the museum – which features more than 300 years of history – during the boring bits.
“The journey into marriage is the most important one you will ever make and the events team here at the museum will pull out all the stops to make it as smooth as possible,” says the NRM’s website.
Check out what’s on offer in a slightly more coherent format here.
Related Posts:
Leave your response!